


To Fight Beside You

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Slice of Life One-Shots [50]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Auror Partners, Auror Training, Family Loss, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Harry getting used to his son being an auror, James getting used to his dad being an auror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: James has been a qualified auror for over a year. His dad is getting better at letting him actually work cases now, but one particularly nasty dark wizard puts his whole world at risk.





	To Fight Beside You

He had been qualified for over a year now, and his father had finally relaxed, as much as he was ever going to, about the dangers of his job. He still caught him, now and then, hesitating over certain case files, handing them to someone else at “random”, but for the most part James found himself growing in confidence as an auror, noticing with mild embarrassment as his voice sometimes slipped into the same authoritative tone as his father at work. Oh dear, was he growing up?

A few cuts, burns and bruises were a small price to pay for the thrill of a good raid or mission, the adrenaline from following someone under his invisibility cloak more than made up for the relentless hours, and the admiring giggle his girlfriend gave him when he returned home in his scarlet robes was worth the gruesome scenes he often came across. James had to admit, he got a bit of a thrill out of them, too. 

‘-Killed him with an enchanted umbrella,’ his father was reading out of a file, ‘so when he opened it, a bunch of little knives fell out of it onto him.’ 

‘Cool,’ said James. ‘Stylish touch.’ 

His dad gave him a withering look. ‘Right, seeing as you clearly don’t have the tact to talk to the victim’s family about this one, it can go to Hazel-’

‘What? No, give me the brolly murder, you never let me do anything fun-’

‘Sorry, Potter,’ said Hazel chirpily. ‘Looks like you’re on surveillance work again.’ 

The briefing room laughed as James pulled a face at her, but Dad raised his hand. ‘Everyone else I want in training for the operation on Monday evening - no pissing about, everyone’s going to be involved-’

‘You’ve tracked him, then?’ Wiggins called from the back. 

‘Yeah, the prick’s snagged himself a castle on the Northumberland coast,’ Dad replied. ‘But I think it will be a big one, so I don’t want to rush in wands blazing - everyone needs to be training while I discuss with the strategy team. Focus on attacking spells rather than defensive, please. Naturally, this all stays confidential, I don’t want him alerted to the fact that we’re coming.’ 

‘Blimmin’ hell,’ huffed Hazel as they left the briefing room. ‘Attacking spells? Not his usual style, is it?’ 

James shrugged. ‘Going to be a big one, I reckon, he’s been in knots about it all week. The guy’s proper grim, I think he wants to make sure it’s done right before he’s the next Voldemort.’ 

‘Oh, fab, should be a walk in the park then, eh? Right, well I’ll go speak to Mr Umbrella’s mum - catch you in the training room later then?’ 

‘Yeah, see you.’ 

He caught sight of his dad walking back towards his office, and changed direction, hurrying towards him. 

‘Hey,’ he said, once he was alongside him. ‘You could have given me one case to work on this week-’

‘Surprisingly, James, this isn’t me giving you special treatment,’ he replied, looking distinctly unhappy about it. ‘The only ones who’ve been given case work this week are the ones on rota for Azkaban or on their day off on Monday night - by the time the operation was arranged it was too late for me to fiddle with the rota. Everybody’s in training for this, so don’t worry, you’ll still get a chance to risk your neck along with everyone else.’ 

‘Bloody hell, what exactly are you expecting?’ 

They had reached the door of his office, and his father sighed heavily. ‘I’m expecting to regret hiring you.’ 

‘Rude.’ 

‘If you want to make yourself really useful you could go and grab me one of those nice pastries from the cafe. You know, with the almonds. A some of the nice coffee too while you’re up there.’ 

‘Eight thousand galleons a year, you pay me,’ said James. ‘To fetch you coffee and snacks.’ 

‘Aren’t you a lucky boy?’ 

James rolled his eyes at his father’s teasing, but wasn’t that keen on going to the overcrowded training room, so dutifully headed to the cafe.

Over the next two days, he did train, his mind whirring from the lack of a good case to work on, growing so restless that on Sunday, where he was down to have a day off, he came in anyway, giving the excuse that he was visiting his girlfriend’s parents so he could avoid lunch at the Burrow without alerting his dad. Dad always nagged him about using his time off properly. 

He went through all his most commonly used spells and learnt a few new ones, tested his reaction times against other aurors, worked out in the gym, read through the file that magically updated with new information for them, drip feeding details about where they were going and what they were doing. By Monday he was desperate to go and have a good scrap - just a ball of pent up frustration and boredom.

He was sure he couldn’t be the only one. As he looked around the briefing room, he could see many faces set in determination - the usual banter and chatter was gone, they were listening to his dad with rapt attention. 

‘As you’ve seen in the files, Gnaeus is likely to be in the centre of the fortress, and it’s likely to be well protected. Apparation isn’t going to be possible. Teams A, B, and D will be entering via the gatehouse, Team C flying in from above, F will be checking for routes at the base of the cliff, I’m sure there’ll be a passageway there.’ 

He was pointing to a huge map of the fortress on the wall, where coloured arrows wriggled and moved as he spoke. 

‘E, G and H, you’re all reinforcements, dealing with whatever’s being thrown back at us-’ James’s heart exploded with fury - he’d been put in reinforcements again! He was sick of this - if he ended up getting killed on this job it would be because his dad refused to let him build up and proper experience. He’d done far more impressive things when he was half James’s age, it wasn’t fair to keep all the adventure and glory to himself.

‘It’s highly likely there’ll be some pretty dark magic on scene,’ he continued, apparently oblivious to James’s scowl. ‘So we’re being joined by the Medi Team and some curse breakers - they’ll be hanging at the back, obviously, but Team H in particular needs to be ready to provide them with cover if they need to run in.’ 

Hands raised, and James only half listened to the question about whether or not they’d been given authority to use lethal force. He’d been waiting for this all week, but Davies team, E, had been pushed back to “reinforcements”. He doubted he’d even get to go in the fortress or see this supposedly terrifying dark wizard, Gnaeus. 

‘Move out,’ his father boomed, and they all rose, casting a few more shield charms over themselves as they walked to the apparation point. As James walked out, he suddenly became aware of his father beside him, and he turned, ready to have a go, but his expression was so grim that the words died in his throat. 

‘Be careful,’ Dad said, gripping his shoulder. ‘Please.’

‘Yeah, of course.’ 

He squeezed his shoulder again, and then slipped away into the crowd. James walked over to Davies and the rest of his team, and, with them, vanished with a crack. 

The night air was bitterly cold - the wind pulled droplets of water from the raging sea and sprayed them with it, even this far up on the cliffs. The wind battered their ears so that they could barely hear one another, and, in the darkness, a partly ruined castle loomed before them, squatter and boxier than Hogwarts had ever been. 

James crouched low - their robes had magically rippled from scarlet to black, and all of them crept towards the castle. Davies held up a fist, and the team stopped. ‘We hold this position,’ he said. 

James rolled his eyes. They were barely anywhere near it. 

Silently, hidden in the dark from his coworkers as much as from the enemy, he carefully trod on the muddy ground and slipped further to the front. 

He could see his father, standing with some of the other most senior aurors, surveying the castle. It was so dark that he couldn’t make them out - he had only recognised his father’s silhouette, but the roaring wind seemed to carry his low voice. 

‘-can feel it, the dark magic. It’s everywhere.’ 

‘Do you think he could have been telling the truth? Where would he have got that many?’ 

‘That’s something we can ask him when we bring him in. But spread the word - I think it is. Inferi.’ 

James’s heart plummeted. This really was darker than anything he had ever dealt with. It was fire, wasn’t it? That was what they had learnt in N.E.W.Ts. That’s what stopped them. 

Someone on a broom landed close by - he heard their feet thump on the ground and a voice, a woman’s voice, speak. ‘There’s piles of them,’ she said. He heard his father swear. 

‘We can’t call it off,’ said Wright sharply. 

‘No, certainly not,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll deal with it. Spread the word to the teams, we advance in two minutes.’ 

‘Yes, boss.’ 

The woman took to the skies again, and Wright and the other auror turned on their heels. James looked back to the castle. Was it crawling with inferi? Were the rumours that Gnaeus was a necromancer why Dad had been so stressed lately?

‘James,’ came a sharp voice. He looked up - he hadn’t noticed his father turn, but was bewildered as to how he had spotted him in such darkness - he couldn’t see his expression, but he could tell from the tone he was furious. 

‘I-’

‘Get to the back with the rest of your team,’ he ordered. ‘Seeing as you’ve eavesdropped, you can tell them what we’re expecting, too.’ 

‘All right,’ said James, scrambling up. He turned, but he felt his arm being grabbed, and was pulled back to face his father. His expression was hidden in shadows still, but he could just see the green of his eyes. 

‘Please,’ he said achingly. ‘Please stay back. And remember - fire does the trick.’ 

If I get killed, dad will never get over it, he thought to himself as he scurried back. He whispered what he had been told to the rest of his team, vaguely surprised that Davies didn’t call him out for wandering off (but perhaps they were all too nervous), and crouched beside them, waiting. 

They watched and waited in breathless silence as Team A and a couple of curse breakers quietly worked on the castle’s protective enchantments. James could see a slight rippling in the air, as though a vast bubble were over the gloomy setting. 

Finally, the curse breakers were running back. He heard them pass him with panting breath and heavy boots, and then ahead, virtually impossible to see now, a shifting mass as the aurors advanced. 

Suddenly, horrifically, terrifyingly, something was pouring over the walls of the castle. It looked like liquid, liquid with huge chunks of something in it, or a swarm of insects, but as the front teams suddenly blasted fire and illuminated them, James could see that they were corpses. 

Something coursed through his veins, at once very hot and very cold. Even from this distance he could see their rotting skin, their exposed bone and mangled hair, so many of them, falling and climbing over each other mindlessly, reaching out with their decayed hands. 

His lips opened as though to swear, but all he could do was stare, rooted to the spot in agonised silence as he watched. 

A huge, explosive, rippling burst of fire bowled forwards, knocking a clear pathway through. As the figure who cast it stormed ahead, he could see it was his father, swiftly followed by others casting great ropes of flame. 

From above, shadowy shapes were dropping balls of flame too, and then Davies was yelling an order, and even though James couldn’t have told you what it was, he was casting bolts of fire too, sending them coursing over the aurors heads and onto the battlements, where more and more inferi seemed to be swarming from the crevices. 

‘Forward!’

James obeyed, marching forward with the rest of them, still casting the flames, wondering if the castle itself was packed with inferi too, and how Dad and the others were going to fight their way back out with the dark wizard too. 

There were yells from the gatehouse, and then to his right Team H was in a tortoise maneuver, their shield charms up, with the Healers in the middle. James rushed forward with a few of the others to provide them with fire cover, and in doing so approached the gate far closer than he knew his father would be happy with. 

Up closer, he could actually smell the inferi, the sweet, rotting smell, the scent of burnt flesh and hair, the putrid breath (was it breath?) that seemed to emanate from them. Now that he was so much closer, he was able to set some of them on fire directly; they flailed around as though they were living, running and stumbling before laying perfectly still as they burned. Their cloudy white eyes shone in the darkness until they were completely blackened into ash - it was like hundreds of tiny white candles gradually being snuffed out. 

There did seem to be fewer now, he thought, and it was a good thing too because he was sure they had been there for about half an hour. Every now and then the Healers were rushed in and back with someone - sometimes the person was patched up and pushed back into the fray, other times James risked a glance behind them and saw them sitting on stretchers, watching blearily, clutching limbs and pressing bloodied rags to their faces. 

‘Why aren’t they taking them to St Mungo’s?’ he roared to Jerome, who had just booted an inferius to the ground before setting it on fire. 

‘Don’t want to be short on Healers, if they can wait, they can wait,’ Jerome shouted back. 

It seemed to get easier as time went on - now that the inferi were less of a wave, they were easier to pick off, and soon it was just a few stragglers leaping from the battlements. 

‘Fall back!’ called Davies. ‘The top teams are dealing with inside, make sure they’ve got space to run out onto.’ 

James had never really realised as a child, but he had quickly learnt that battles and fights tended to fizzle out rather than end with a moment of glory, with a few notable exceptions involving his father. 

So he stood with Crispin and Deanna, quietly exchanging battle notes as they watched the patches of fire flicker against the stone walls. 

‘What d’you think’s happening in there?’ asked Crispin, nodding to the fortress. Some of the windows occasionally lit up with flashes of colour. 

‘I don’t know, it’s driving me mad,’ said James. ‘Wish we could go in and help.’ 

‘The top dogs have got it, we’d just confuse things,’ said Deanna. ‘I think we’ve done a pretty decent job though, don’t you? Look how many there are.’ 

Yes, thought James with a satisfied grin. The ground was littered with the remnants of dark magic, dark magic that could have caused devastation, but they had stopped it. He had finally grasped what his father had been saying for so many years, that it wasn’t about the glory moments, but the satisfaction of a job well-

‘Auror down! Auror down!’ 

The three of them looked to the gatehouse, where people were running. Two people seemed to be carrying another between them as they ran, grasping their arms, dragging their legs along the ground, their head flopping forwards. 

‘Oh, god,’ groaned Deanna, as Crispin hissed. 

‘Auror down?’ asked James. ‘Bloody hell, it must have been nasty in there-’

‘I wonder who it was,’ said Crispin. ‘Fuck…’ 

‘I don’t think they’re dead, or they wouldn’t be running with them,’ said Deanna. ‘Look - that man in the white robes - they’ve got him in handcuffs, that must be Gnaeus-’

James looked away from the shadowy figures of the dead, or close to dying, auror, and could indeed see a skeletal-looking man in white robes, his cruel face illuminated by a nearby burning inferius. Wright was on one side of him, and old Dawlish on the other, his arms were bent behind him so he had clearly been arrested. 

‘Job done then,’ said James. 

‘Oh, god,’ he heard Deanna say in quiet horror. ‘Who is that? What happened to them?’ 

James looked back - the two aurors carrying the third had almost met them now, and the person they were carrying was barely recognisable - coated in blood, looking as though chunks had been ripped out of them, barely together, their dark hair matted with blood… 

James stepped forward, his eyes falling to the auror’s limp hand, where a recognisable silver wedding band shone in the dim light. 

‘Dad?’ he said blankly. 

The two aurors had been met by sprinting Healers, and they lay his father heavily, clumsily on the ground. He didn’t have his glasses on. The Healers crouched over him immediately; one of them lifted his limp hand and touched her fingers to his wrist. 

‘Dad,’ he said again, louder, stepping forward as though in a daze. 

‘Fib charm,’ the Healer said briskly, dropping his wrist, and another pointed their wand at him. Pulses of blue light came from the tip and sank into his chest. 

Everything had gone eerily quiet, except for the ringing in his ears. He stood there, and watched, as another Healer produced a long rubber tube, forced open his father’s bloody and mangled jaw, and forced it down his throat.

‘Come on, son,’ one of the senior aurors was saying to him. He sounded far away, but he couldn’t have been, because his hand was gently pulling on his bicep. ‘Come on, you don’t want to watch this… Don’t look…’ 

‘Dad…’ 

The Healer was pouring potions down his throat using the horrible rubber tube, while another was casting incantations over his body, and the last was still sending that pulsing blue into his chest, and all of them were shouting things to one another. 

For some reason, James kept thinking about his dad lying in bed, yawning sleepily and rolling over in yellow morning light, smiling in exasperation as James, so tiny that it was an effort to clamber onto the bed, tried to shake him awake. 

He was breathing heavily, but his father wasn’t. His father was invincible. He had survived a deadly curse twice. Le Survivant, that’s what all of Vic’s family called him. He was a world famous hero, a figure of legend, with so many brave stories, that had grabbed him as a giggling little boy and hauled him onto the bed, and jokingly scolded him for waking them too early, and laughed as he seized James’s kicking feet and tickled them. 

‘Alert!’ shouted one of the Healers, and the blue pulsing stopped.

They pulled the tube out, and then one of the Healers was leaning close, calling, ‘Harry!’ over and over again. To James’s shock, he saw his father’s hand twitch, the wedding band glinting in the light from the fires, and the Healer leaned his head close to Dad’s mouth, his eyes glancing over to James. 

‘Yes, he’s right there, I can see him,’ said the Healer, nodding. ‘Yeah, fine.’ 

Then he looked back down at Dad suddenly, and was shouting again. ‘Harry! Keep ‘em open! Harry!’

The Healers were cutting off the shirt part of his robes - blood bubbled from his chest, it looked like chunks had been gouged out of him somehow - surely there were organs there? Surely no one could…

They were touching their fingers to his wrist again, and the blue pulsing spell was back, and growing more rapid, and James thought that the Healers were starting to look quite angry, quite frustrated, their lips moving rapidly as they cast the spells. 

He knew that his lips were moving, that he was shouting something, that he was moving with some kind of trembling shake and that someone’s arms were around him, but all he was truly aware of was the Healers, up to their elbows in blood, suddenly standing with his father on a stretcher between them, and all of them linking hands over his mangled body, and then in an instant they were gone.

He stumbled dizzily; he tried to apparate but simply spun in a circle. Deanna grabbed his arm. ‘Look at me,’ she said, and he did, and then suddenly felt the terrible squeeze and dizziness of apparation, and then the bright whiteness of St Mungos. 

What happened next was a bit of a blur, that when he thought back later he could remember only highly detailed snatches of. The gulping blub of the water cooler. His sister, still in her trainee Healer uniform, running into the ward, babbling that she’d just heard and demanding to know why they wouldn’t let her help. The fabric, up very close from where he was leaning his head, of the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room. His own dirty fingernails. Mum turning up, white faced, and then Teddy, in tears, and then Albus, being supported by a grim-faced Scorpius, breathing shakily and asking what had happened. The rattle of trolleys as they passed and the squeak of the Healers’ shoes on the floor. 

He couldn’t be… This couldn’t be it. This felt too dreamlike, he was sure it wasn’t really happening. He tried to think of more memories of dad, like the one that had sprung unexpectedly to mind, but to his horror he found that Dad was always slightly out of frame. Perhaps he had been too selfish, too self-centred as a child, because he could remember sitting on the chair outside the Headmistress’s office, and he could remember his father’s legs stepping out from behind the gargoyle, could remember the folded arms and his chest as he pulled him towards the stairs, but he couldn’t remember his face. He could remember the glint of the snitch as he chased it around the living room, and could almost see his dad, as though in soft focus, in the background, laughing, but couldn’t see his face. He could remember the long drives back from the station, could remember the books on his lap and joking with Teddy and teasing Al, and his father’s green eyes flicking to look at him in the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t remember any more than that. 

He had spent the entire evening worrying about himself, convinced that he was going to get himself killed or injured and his dad would be plunged into self-hatred, or worse, anger at him, and not once had it occurred to him that the danger his father was pushing him away from was a danger to him too. 

He felt Lily curling beside him as she hugged him and his mother on the other side kissing his head, and he realised that he was sobbing, loudly. 

Finally, a Healer approached them, and spoke to his mother. ‘He’s awake,’ he said. ‘A little confused and still in a delicate position but I think we’re through the worst of it.’

‘Thank you, Healer Gower,’ she said. 

They followed him down the corridor, and he, relaxed and apparently not uncomfortable with the sobbing family, conversationally said, ‘a few years ago he would have been horribly scarred after all that, but times do move on. Amazing, eh? We were able to regrow the tissue eventually, as there wasn’t any actual spell damage.’ 

He led them into a little room, where his father lay, pale and with closed eyes against the pillow, his chest rising and falling. James rushed forward to be on his father’s right side, as his head seemed slightly leaned that way, and without thinking, without being embarrassed, grasped his hand as he took the seat closest to his father’s face. 

At the movement, his father’s eyes flickered gently open, and stared at James for a second. Then he frowned slightly. ‘You all right?’ he asked, his voice hoarse. 

James nearly laughed. What a stupid question. ‘Yeah.’ 

‘What’re you crying for?’ 

Now James did laugh - a spluttered, half-crying laugh. His father squeezed his hand slowly, as though it took him a great deal of effort, and slowly rolled his head to look at the rest of the family that had gathered close around his bed too, all of them reach out to touch him. 

‘What are you lot all doing here?’ he asked. 

Mum leaned forward, stroking his hair and looking down with a gentle expression. ‘You gave us all a bit of a scare,’ she said softly. 

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Did I? I’m sorry.’ He frowned. ‘Oh, yes, they were ripping chunks out of me. The inferi.’ 

‘That’s right.’ 

He winced, and his eyes flicked back up at his wife. ‘Do I look like Mad-Eye now?’ 

She laughed. ‘No.’

‘Thank god for that,’ he muttered, his eyes drooping closed again. 

‘You tired?’ Mum asked. 

‘Mmm,’ he replied, his eyes still closed. ‘The kids all right?’ 

‘We’re all fine, Dad,’ said Lily tearfully. 

He nodded, and gave a sigh. ‘James, I told you not to be a bloody auror.’ And then, despite their gentle prompts, he slipped into sleep. 

***

Several days later, James was walking easily down the hospital corridor clutching a large card and an even larger slab of chocolate. When he reached his father’s room, he found him sitting up and grinning cheerfully, chatting with Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. 

‘I suppose I’ll have to sign you off work for a bit longer,’ said Aunt Hermione dryly. ‘At least another week, Healer Gower said.’ 

Dad grinned. ‘Oh, but Hermione, we had my appraisal on Wednesday, I’d be gutted to miss it-’

‘That’s all right, I can bring it in and we can do it here, I know you’ve been looking forward to it.’ 

‘I reckon I’m going to be unconscious again that day.’ 

‘Convenient that you can plan it like that.’ 

‘Told you he was milking it,’ chipped in Uncle Ron. 

James knocked on the door, even though it was open, and they all looked over at him and smiled. 

‘Hello, mate,’ said Dad cheerfully. 

‘Everyone at work signed a card for you,’ James said. ‘There’s a collection too, I used some of it to get the chocolate, but the rest-’

‘Ah, put it in the fountain,’ said Dad easily. 

James grinned. ‘I already did.’ 

‘Good lad,’ he said, taking the card and opening it. ‘Ahh… Look, Dawlish just signed his name. No message, just Dawlish. Not even a first name.’ 

Uncle Ron sniggered. ‘Can’t believe he’s still there.’ 

‘I think he refuses to retire just to spite me,’ said Dad, smirking. 

‘Speaking of which,’ said James hesitantly, taking a seat by the bed. ‘I was thinking maybe you should retire.’ 

Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione chuckled and said ‘oooh’ rather darkly, as though James had been incredibly cheeky. Dad had just turned to stare at him incredulously. ‘Excuse me?’ 

‘I was just thinking, it might be the right time-’

‘Do you think this happened because I’m old?’ Dad demanded. 

‘Well... Yeah,’ said James awkwardly. 

‘Look, I used to nearly die much more regularly - I think I’m getting a lot better at avoiding it.’ 

‘It’s true,’ said Uncle Ron sagely. ‘Honestly, James, at one point we all just stopped worrying. It got boring, frankly.’ 

‘Sometimes I didn’t bother to come to the hospital,’ said Aunt Hermione. ‘Ron would just give my best wishes.’ 

‘George made him a little counter for a laugh, it was on his desk for ages.’

‘This is my first slip up in years,’ Dad continued. ‘And it was only because someone on my team was a bloody moron and I was trying to stop them killing themselves - took my eye off the ball to send a few flames their way.’ 

‘Oh,’ said James. ‘Was that Pendleton? Because he hasn’t looked me in the eye since it happened, and he wrote ‘I’m really sorry’ in your card.’ 

‘Yeah, the muppet,’ said Dad. ‘He’s not going to bloody well get a promotion now, is he?’

Uncle Ron snorted. James continued to look uneasily at his father. ‘You don’t think… It’s getting a bit risky now? Now that you’re only out in the field for the really big stuff?’ 

‘The time to worry about that was when you were all really small - you know, when I had to provide for you all.’ 

‘I’d still be losing a lot.’ 

Dad looked over at Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione, and Uncle Ron winked. ‘We’re going to go get a coffee. Want anything?’ 

‘Yeah, one of those pastries with the almonds,’ said Dad. When they had left, he turned back to James. ‘I know that must have been really horrible for you,’ he said gently. ‘I’m sorry. I hope you realise why I’m so funny about putting you on the rota now though. If our places had been switched I never would have forgiven myself.’ 

‘But-’

‘And the awful thing is,’ Dad continued, his voice sounding strangely strangled, ‘is that if you’re serious about this as a career, if you intend to progress beyond junior level… Something like this will happen to you. It’s part of the job, to just get beaten up for a living every now and then.’ 

‘I don’t care about it happening to me,’ said James. ‘It’s not the same as you, I don’t have a wife and kids.’ 

‘Well, not yet,’ said Dad. ‘I thought you were seeing - oh, what’s her name-’ 

‘Clara.’ 

‘Oh, I thought it was Effie or something.’ 

‘Aoife? No, she was a few months ago.’ 

‘Right, sure,’ said Dad, looking amused. ‘Anyway, you might do at some point, and even if you didn’t, you’d still have people who love you. Like me and your mum, and Al and Lily and Ted. Don’t get me started on Grandma-’

‘Yeah, I know,’ urged James. ‘But it’s not the same.’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘It’s just not, I… I just…’ Dad raised an eyebrow at him. He took a breath. ‘I just don’t want to lose a parent.’ 

‘Oh, James,’ he said, reaching to clasp his shoulder. ‘You will, one day, it’s just the way of it. People lose their parents. Everyone. Some sooner than others. But it’s meant to be that way round. Hopefully for you it won’t be until I’m in my 90s and you’re sick of looking after me by then anyway.’ 

James smiled weakly, and blinked hard. ‘Just don’t want to see you go down next to me, fighting some reanimated corpse.’ 

‘I don’t much fancy that way out either,’ said Dad lightly, lying back on the pillows. ‘I tell you what, I’ll retire if you resign.’ 

‘What?!’ 

‘Well, I’m not leaving if it means I can’t fiddle with the rota and keep you out of the way,’ said Dad stubbornly. ‘I mean, bloody hell, James, forget the inferi, you nearly gave me a heart attack when I turned around and saw you on the front line.’ 

‘I’m never gonna learn anything if you-’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said impatiently. ‘And I’m getting better at it, aren’t I?’

‘Yeah,’ admitted James reluctantly. ‘Gradually. I still think you should retire. You just can’t admit you’re old and slow now.’ 

Dad broke off a bit of the chocolate and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘I’m still your boss. I could just fire you.’ 

James looked at him nervously, but Dad just winked, and chucked him a square of chocolate.


End file.
